Tag Archives: Kat Richardson

One of the “stories” I pretty much always enjoy is the “scientific measurement of ghosts gone awry” type. The Haunting of Hill House being the most awesome of all classic examples, The Legend of Hell House (I haven’t read the book yet, I just really love Roddy McDowall), and Alexandra Sokoloff’s The Unseen being some of my particular favorites – and now I can add Poltergeist from the Harper Blaine series to that list.

In Poltergeist, a university research group is trying to create an artificial poltergeist and of course, some of them start to die or be threatened, so who is faking the poltergeist? Anyone? Bueller? In a version of Seattle with Harper Blaine and the ever-present Grey, it is not necessary to fake such things. It is possible to be too successful with university research experiments.

As ghosts, it’s way easier for Pammy and Twiglet to hunt for additional ghosts they might not want me to live with. If somebody came in my home with a spirit box, they’d get a metric ton of wheeking.

Harper Blaine is the “Just the facts, ma’am,” type of P.I. with a supernatural edge. She really reminds me of Rhona Mitra, so if there’s ever a film version, that’s my actress suggestion. In a way, she’s quite cold as a heroine and I really liked that. A lady character doesn’t have to be overly empathetic and it’s nice to see some emotionally distant main characters who know they are emotionally distant. Her best connection is with her ferret, Chaos, and I wholly support that as a reader. The importance of pets is often overlooked. I cannot say that I wasn’t worried that Chaos would then die in the story as that tends to happen to animals that resonate, but, I’m now seven books into the series and Chaos is still going strong – her care is still specified in a sentence or two, never just overlooked for plot speed. That’s good.

This is the first in the Greywalker series and so there’s a lot of world building, but it didn’t get boring. Harper does make a lot of phone calls and does a lot of parking, though. Sometimes the logistical details can make things a bit dry, but the way Richardson writes, it seems to me that the logistics are there to settle your senses for the unrealities – which are quite easy to visualize. It’s also set in Seattle, which really works as a setting for anything with “grey” in it and mist…

Duncan comes in on little guinea pig feet. She sits- well, she’s standing here, but we’re parodying Sandburg so- she sits, looking over bedroom and beyond, on silent haunches, and then moves on.